This past weekend at PAX East I was able to get some hands on time with Elders Scroll Online and got to pay the lands of Tamriel a little visit. At first look at the game I noticed how detailed and beautiful Tamriel is.

Let’s get down to the game, jumping right into it you will notice a lot of similarities to Skyrim which is not a bad thing, after all it is an Elders Scroll game. TESO like many other MMORPG's the character creation is very vast giving the player the ability to really create a unique character. But what I quickly noticed after playing through the first quest in the main storyline is that your character does not start out with any skills. I found myself having to be very sneaky to accomplish my objective, going in head first I found myself dying time after time, when I finished my 2 hours of gameplay I was at level 7 and it started to feel that my character could handle himself in a combat situation.

I am not saying that starting off with no skills is completely a bad thing, but it will take some getting used to as it will take time to level up your player and there will be consciences for death in TESO but at the time I was playing they were still trying to figure out what that would be. So my run and slash approach would be met a little bit hard then just re-spawning nearby giving myself enough to either run away or turn and get revenge (which may or may not be an achievement).

When it comes time to level up your character you will receive one skill point ( Skill points can be earned in different ways other than just leveling up) You will also receive an attribute point which can be used to boost health, Magicka, or Stamina. The skill point is used to unlock any number of skills in the game which are based on a skill-based progression system similar to Skyrim.

The combat system seems to have gotten a complete face lift from previous Elder Scroll Games. The AI seems much improved the enemy will actually come at you instead of running backwards and swinging. It seems very smooth as what you would expect if you were in a sword battle. The combat system really keeps you on your toes and you really need to take use of Blocking power-attacks, dodging, and countering if you want to defeat your enemy otherwise you will find yourself looking at the ground or the sky a lot like I did.

Overall TESO looks good and very, very large. When asked how large TESO is I was told that the part of Tamriel I was in from one side to the other could take you up to 30 minutes if you went on foot and took to virtual exercising. For the marathoners out there it could take up to 5 hours to go through all the territories in Tamriel. You will also be looking at roughly 120 hours of game play to reach the level cap. Once you have reached the cap you are able to switch to one of the other two factions and play through their storyline.

In closing TESO looks very promising but at this point nothing has total stood out to me to make the game "innovative" or "revolutionary" in the MMORPG Genre. It really looks like a bigger version of Skyrim with online play with up to 200 other characters.